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Twitter vs. Blogging

Blogging in the House!

On Anil’s piece titled If You Didn’t Blog It, It Didn’t Happen, I left the following comment:

Twitter is like going to a restaurant. Blogging is like buying a house.

I thought I should expand on that… and what better place than right here, on my own blog, where I’m allowed to.

As I’ve said before (in fact, I said it just yesterday) there are things I don’t like about Twitter, but my not liking these things, or complaining about them probably isn’t going to change them. That’s OK… I don’t own Twitter, I don’t control Twitter, I just visit Twitter.

Twitter is like going to a restaurant. You can talk to people you know, and people you don’t know. They can talk to you. You can overhear conversations. You’re at the mercy of the management. They can kick you out.

Blogging is like buying a house. It requires maintenance and upkeep. You’re free to do what you want, you can redecorate, or hang some pictures, or ramble on as long as you want. It’s your home, you own it, and you make the rules.

Anyway, that’s how I see it. I’ve had this blog since 1997. I’ve been using Twitter since 2006. I can still get to every single blog post I’ve written here (and so can you) while Twitter only lets me see a portion of the content I’ve put into it. I’ve started archiving as much of it as I can over here… on my own site, because I don’t trust Twitter with my data the way I trust myself with my data.

8 replies on “Twitter vs. Blogging”

I have come to hate Twitter. People seem to add me because of my affiliations with other people. For me any conversation is non-existant. Now this has to do with who I follow and who follows me, I am attempting to resolve this.

Over all it sure seems like a few people shout through bullhorns. Then those that follow them repeating the same thing through the bullhorns. Or they link to everything as if they are some kind of visionary content wrangler. Yes I read Mashable and most what they say blows. Great more top 10 reasons why no one is following me on twitter. Really this is what it is? Seems to have turned into 140 character cult of personality.

If attention is the currency of the day, and some people are more concerned with saying “Look at me!” than with actually adding value, then maybe Twitter’s users get what they deserve…

Still, I think there is value if you know where (or how) to look for it.

Blogging was accused of being navel-gazing… so what is Twitter?

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Sure it’s good for nuggets here and there but when I find them I put it in my RSS reader. Then i don’t miss things as I detest checking Twitter to see if I have missed anything then get pissed that I wasted time checking.

Great for customer service though.

No to into it for friendship/stalking.

I’m not sure my analogy is perfect either, but I think blogging is more likely owning a bar. You can throw everyone out, you dominate the conversation, you decorate as you please.

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